Some of them are still famous, and are letting off one last blast. Keith Richards (pictured) looked back and concluded that "life is an experiment, and it's just a matter of getting the alchemical or chemical combination right". Jilly Cooper has revised a guide to love and marriage. Joanna Lumley has been laying down the law, too. It is just fine for an older woman to wear clothes designed for teenagers, she has said. As for the idea that she should have short hair after the age of 40, "Bollocks to that! I want my hair long and I'm going to keep my long hair".

US comedian Margaret Cho has never minced her words. She once called Sarah Palin "the worst thing to happen to America since 9/11" and her stance on gay rights has drawn fire from conservatives at home.

The international success of hit shows including Doctor Who and Sherlock saw the BBC's commercial arm post record profits last year. The strong performance also meant that the head of the division's total pay packet overtook that of the Director-General.

Last year, a highbrow glossy magazine asked me to nominate one classic drama that might well not get the green light in our current cultural climate. With my tongue hovering close to my cheek, I proposed George Bernard Shaw's acute, glittering comedy Pygmalion (1913). I suggested that in our era of job-swap, wife-swap and life-swap programmes, Shaw's concept would be found wanting. His Professor Higgins conducts an experiment to prove the arbitrariness of social distinctions by training a cockney flower-seller to talk posh. But given our present-day appetite for the inauthentic and the provisional, Shaw would be forced to invent a situation whereby the professor and Eliza Doolittle switched roles for a week, with Eliza trying to fake it as a phonetician and Higgins struggling to come over all gor-blimey flogging blooms.

Is former Countryfile presenter Miriam O'Reilly brave or bonkers? Try as I may, I can't see her ageism victory over the BBC as another great leap forward for womankind, or pensioners. Of course, it's terrific that Miriam will receive a full apology from director-general Mark Thompson, as well as a large sum of money. But, as she basks in the limelight following her successful court appearance, will she be asked to present a prime-time programme on BBC1 as a result of her victory over the corporation?